1. Field of the Invention
This invention concerns part feeders and more particularly vibratory part feeders of the type known as bowl feeders.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Vibratory part feeders such as bowl feeders have been quite successful for feeding small parts from bulk into assembly machines, automatic machine tools, etc. In these machines a bowl having a spiral trough leading upwardly from the center of the bowl is vibrated which causes parts to advance upwardly along this trough and be fed one at a time out of the device. Two problems exist in such conventional devices. One, the parts are not necessarily spaced as they pass out of the device such that reliable one-at-a-time feeding by simply turning the device on and off is not possible. Secondly, the vibratory movements tend to be quite noisy because of movement against the bowl structure, and if dampening material is added to the bowl structure, this tends to interfere with the part advance movement.
This latter problem is aggravated by the continuous mode of operation of most of these devices, that is the parts to be fed are recycled into the bowl in order to control the movement of parts out of the feeder.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a vibratory feeder which is capable of one-at-a-time part feeding by means of a simple on-off control.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an arrangement for quieting the operation of vibratory feeders which does not affect the feeding performance of the device.